Diaries of a Nokia Fan Boy

Most people in-the-know agree that the best GPS receiver chip is CSR’s SiRFstarIII. The chip is very accurate, and obtains its position extremely fast. The down side, however, is that the chip drains battery like no tomorrow – which is why most cellphone manufacturers do not use it. However now CSR is releasing the successor: SiRFstarIV. The improvements mean that you will be able to have your GPS start up in seconds while using about as much current as your calculator program!

The SiRFstarIV Architecture
The SiRFstarIV architecture core is comprised of a high-performance GPS location engine, smart location sensor interface, adaptive micro-power manager and active jammer remover, which together deliver:

• Twice the search capacity of the industry proven SiRFstarIII architecture
• Advanced micro-power management and integrated switched-mode regulation that maintains hot-start conditions with minimal energy (50-500 microamperes)
• Intelligent MEMs sensor support (for accelerometers and other sensors) that improves the location experience, enabling greater contextual awareness, more sophisticated energy management and enhanced indoor positional accuracy
• Advanced DSP technology that actively searches for jammers and removes them prior to correlation for maximum GPS performance and design troubleshooting

Just like the introduction of the accelerometer, and the digital compass, so this will bring many fascinating applications, including finally having the ability to GPS-tag our photos without being worried about destroying our batteries in the process!

-Nokia FanBoy

read: press release
via: Symbian Freak (read)